Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your won. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Bee too big for worry and too noble for anger.--Christian D. Larsen (Creed for Optimists)

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.--Dietrich Bonhoeffer ("After Ten Years" Letters and Papers from Prison)

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man--Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?--Maxim Gorky (The Lower Depths)

Grab your coat, and get your hat
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street.--Dorothy Fields ("On the Sunny Side of the Street")

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.--Duke Ellington

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door--or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.--Joan Rivers

If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.--Hazel Henderson

The incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.--B. C. Forbes

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.--Paul Harvey

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn' t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.--Lucille Ball

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant--the digitalis of failure.--Elbert Hubbard (A Thousand and One Epigrams)

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is color- blind.--Albert Schweitzer

An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.--Felix Adler

An optimist is the human personification of spring.--Susan J. Bissonette (Reader's Digest)

The optimist pleasantly ponders how high his kite will fly; the pessimist woefully wonders how soon his kite will fall.--William Arthur Ward

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.--James Branch Caball (The Silver Stallion)

The optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.--J. Robert Oppenheimer

People have been wonderful to me in the good times and the bad, and I've come to believe that you do indeed reap what you sow. For those who constantly gripe about life, I turn and walk away. For those who speak negatively about people behind their backs, I move on.--Bob Losure (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.--Colin Powell

A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, an mopes; a philosopher sees both sides and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all--he's walking on them.--D. O. Glynn

Pessimists are second rate people. They do not believe in life. ... All they want to do is drag you down and appease their own feelings of mediocrity and fear.--U. S. Anderson

Pessimists are usually kind. The gay, bubbling over, have no time for the pitiful.--Sean O'Faolain

Positive thinking won't let you do anything but it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes) 

Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.--Grace Paley

Stick with the optimists. It's going to be tough enough even if they're right.--James Reston (advice to his grandson in New York Times Feb. 1980)

Take one thing with another, and the world is a pretty good sort of a world, and it is our duty to make the best of it, and be thankful.--Benjamin Franklin (Letter to Mrs. Jane Mecom, March 1, 1766)

There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral lows, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.--Agnes Repplier ("Are Americans Timid?")

When you have vision it affects your attitude. Your attitude is optimistic rather than pessimistic.--Charles R. Swindoll (Living Above the Level of Mediocrity)

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!--Robert Browning